Raku Clay body.. Several of these didn't make it past the bisque... I'm accident prone..rats!
The bag bottle on the left didn't make it to bisque but I'm going to reincarnate it.
So I bought this old kiln and have re-pourposed it for raku. I pulled the wires, got out my hole saw and lined the interior with ceramic fiber. I bought a Ward MR 750 Burner, a digital pyrometer, a 40# Propane tank and away we go!
High temperature coils may be good for something someday but not for heating.
One of my neighbors put these out on the side of the road...how timely!
So there's the first batch. I didn't mention but I mixed my first glaze from scratch! White Crackle.
Ok, not a lot of crackle but it gets better.
My dedicated if useless studio assistants.
Pretty good cone 2 but I had to pull all of the stops. Full open at 25 PSI. It took a while to get there. I think I could improve the burner port...the ceramic fiber was a little rough around the hole.
The pieces on the right were pulled at 1925F. I think the pieces on the left went to reduction to early and didn't crack tvery much.
Lids are my nemesis! The lid on the left is a complete mystery and really amuses me. A bowl dunted (blew its bottom out) and a shard seems to have struck the lid button. The button broke off and slid about an inch out of center and resealed itself in the glaze. The shard also seems to have found the lid a good place to set roots. Of course the unglazed section where the button was has turned black with reduction. I'm charging extra for this piece! More bad news. The piece on the right was doing fine until I scrubbed the lid a little to hard and it snapped in half (note extra black crack).
More playing with fire to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment